Visit to GFDL, Princeton, New Jersey (12 July 2013) GRACE workshop, Pasadena, California

Date: 
July 2013

Recipient: 

Marie-Estelle

Demory

I am a project scientist developing high-resolution global climate models. My main focus is the global hydrological cycle, and its sensitivity to models’ horizontal resolution. The global hydrological cycle is not well simulated by climate models, which leads to very large uncertainties in climate change projections. It is therefore crucial to make use of good observational data to evaluate and understand the processes involved in the hydrological cycle and possibly improve its simulation.

With this aim in mind, I attended a workshop organised by the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) team and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)’s Center for Climate Sciences on the use of GRACE data to monitor, simulate and understand ongoing changes in the Earth’s hydrosphere and water cycle. Since 2002, the GRACE mission has been measuring Earth's gravity field variations, revealing
key insights into Earth’s water storage and transport processes over land, ice and oceans. These data are unprecedented tools to evaluate global climate models on seasonal to decadal timescales, and it is crucial for our team to make use of these data.

During the workshop, I was able to present and discuss my work on the global hydrological cycle and establish new collaborations on the use of GRACE data. The use of these data will contribute to improve our understanding of the mechanisms involved in the hydrological cycle, particularly in the transport of moisture in the atmosphere.

I also took the opportunity of this event to stop in New Jersey and visit the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton. I gave a seminar on the sensitivity of the global hydrological cycle to horizontal resolution in General
Circulation Model. This visit was important to meet scientists, who also develop high- resolution global climate models, and encourage collaborations.

I am very grateful to the Royal Meteorological Society for their financial assistance. This allowed me to meet scientists at GFDL and JPL and develop new collaborations, which are so important for my research.